* The are good to to take the damage, and get killed (lol) and then resurrect them with summon pitfiends with the devils
* gate them in from of the enemy shooters
* Put them around the enemy units to use explosion(damage al nearly units)

LEVEL 3

Hell Hound

good points:

* Decent attack (6) and damage ( 3 – 6)
* Good initiative (13)

bad points:

* Lack of speciallity
* mediocre defense (2) and hp (15)

tips:

* Use gating in front of enemy’s shooters
* Upgrade them as son as possible

* Gate nightmares in front of the enemy’s shooter defenders (sylvan treands) , the fear effect can give us the change to reach the shooters
* thanks to the increase of the defense and hp, this unit can be used to protect the succubus

Those stats seem to be from early beta or the like though, they are slightly different in game thankfully. Just one example here is that the devils deal 36-66 damage now and teleport instead of fly. The minotaurs in dungeon looked really weak earlier too, but are a bit better now. The best part is that they are a 1 hex unit now instead of 4. Mostly the hp has been upped for a lot of units from what I've seen in the demo. I do like that page though and have it bookmarked, it should have the correct information soon.
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I have been studying the skills that Inferno get, information from http://www.celestialheavens.com/viewpage.php?id=520 , a very good chart. I am a power player and like to get maximum effects. A couple of skills I have looked at for a Demon Lord hero is to get Nymus who has: Gate Keeper - The number of creatures called through the Gating increases by 1% per hero level. And starts with basic luck, and magic resistance. To get Urgash's Call, the Infernos ultimate ability, which allows instant gating, you must get Teleport Assault, Dead Man's Curse, Power of Speed. To get these abilities, you must get Luck, Logistics, Attack, and Dark Magic. This will leave you with one skill slot left open, which you can use for Sorcery - Consume Corpse, Destructive - Searing Fires, Defense - Hellfire Wraith, or leadership - Gate Master. What builds are popular when playing Inferno? Also what units are good to get, I was playing a map the other day and was really struggling with money, so I had to plan which units were best for my army, and I really like the pit fiends/lords and the succubus for the most efficiant use of my gold.

Heres just a quick list of all the abilities I found useful to gating and hellfire:

Luck -
Swarming Gate - 15-30% chance to summon twice as many as normal,
though i have heard it is only 50%.
Logistics -
Swift Gating - Gating becomes 50% faster.
Teleport Assault - Acquire teleportation. Increased initiative of
creature being teleported. (Useful for those slow pitlords, after
they are done with casting)
Attack -
Excruciating Strike - 40% chance that Mark will deal double
damange.
Sorcery -
Soulfire - Demon Lord consumes corpses to restore mana, may
suddenly explode. This is good if you have mana problems, but the
explosion hurts your own units, which will be close if you just
kill the stack, and it takes the heros turn.
Destructive -
Searing Fires - Hellfire is increased by 50%
Mana Burst - Any time an enemy craeture casts a spell it will
recieve fire damage.
Defense -
Hellfire Wrath - Hellfire will be dealt on retaliation.
Leadership -
Gate Master - 20% more units trhough gating.
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I have a question about the Inferno's special building, the Infernal Loom. http://www.heroesofmightandmagic.com/heroes5/inferno_buildings_magic.shtml
says that "The Infernal Loom increases number of gated creatures by 5%. Enemy heroes sieging this town get -2 to luck." However,
http://www.heroesofmightandmagic.com/heroes5/ability_gating.shtml says that it causes gating to be 30% faster. The game says the first one is what its does, but is there also the hidden bonus of 30% faster gating?
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I think it is a typo because I get seieged all the time, and gating was only faster when I got swift gating (and, of course, Urgash's call)
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The wraith is reserved?!?! NOOOO I'M NOT GOING TO BE PINK AND UNDEAD!

My tip is: play Deleb. Fireball ballista at level 10 deals more damage than 10 pitlords would do with fireballs. ;x And it seems possible to get the skill that adds third shot, so.. lol.. All you need is a meatshield (hi horned demons) and there you go, you clean the map with ease.. amazing thing.

I say to heck with Deleb and play as Nymus- With Urgash's call or even Swift gating- he has beaten heroes twice his level.
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The wraith is reserved?!?! NOOOO I'M NOT GOING TO BE PINK AND UNDEAD!

You need to be around lv 30 to get urgash call not to mention the insane luck you gotta have while leveling upp not to get wrong attributes. I also doubt that nymus could beat someone twice his lv, as a lv 28-32 would beat a hero thats 56-64 (if thats even possible). More over nymus starting bonus + 15% magic resistance makes him unable to even get urgash call. Since u need soldiers luck, swarming gate and dead mans curse. You can only have three abilities / skill. So in other words nymus having urgash call is BS.

Deleb I consider to be one of the best inferno heroes. She can with a small army achive alot. Getting all the mines in the first two weeks is very important. Mix with the firstaid tent skill and you can rez your units 300hp if you should loose any. Deleb has no problems getting a second town quickly or rushing.

Nymus gets a bonus to gating wich is nice but often I dont even gate all my creatures in a battle, takes to long time, even with swift gating. If creatures "waste their time" gating the opponent might have time to kill as many creatures as you gained gating. Imps, overseers and pitlords are a good idea to gate mostly.

Getting tactics or wind(strider?) boots well whatever the once giving you +1 to speed. Place ure nightmares and cerebri where you know they will reach the enemy. If you have hellfire and searing flames it helps. If ure cerebri reach the enemy before they can kill any off them you allready have an upperhand in the battle cause they deal ALOT of damage aswell as the nightmares. They die fast so I rather use them and use their damage then seeing them die.

Getting teleportassult can be a very good idea to get ure pitlords in range once their mana is out, since demonlords have crappy spellpower you dont have to feel sorry not using a damaging spell. Teleportassault works well for overseers aswell.

Other skills and abilities that are nice to have.

** Destructive magic:

* Master of fire: -50% defence to high lv creatures before attacking with your devils makes a huge difference. This only requiers advance destruction magic and IMO dont go for more unless forced to by crappy alternatives. Most often ure spellpower sucks and you only use fireball to get -50% to an enemy. Also this contributes to searing flames.

* Searing flames 50% extra damage, could be good could be bad based on how good hellfire is, well its good. Both for small and large armies. Getting 80extra damage from one succubus is nice happend me once. If you wanna know exactly how good it is let me give you an example.

Archangels have 31 defence say the hero you face have 10 defence. Thats a total of 41 defence. Lets say to make it easy that you have 10 attack and archdevils. Thats 41 attack. If the devils were to attack now they would deal normal damage. However if you use a fireball first the angles will have 20defence. A difference in 20 between attack and defence makes the devlis do 100% more damage. So if 10 devils would have killed 2 angels they now kill 4. Remeber the decrease in armour is still there if angels attack and someone retaliate.

** Darkmagic - If you arent going for fireball you can go for darkmagic chances are you will get frenzy in your mage guild and some nice debuffing spells like vulnerabilty, weakness and suffering. Remember using mass spells only uses half initiative so sorcery wouldnt be necesarry even though its very good for this combo. But I usually prioritize other skills and attribues over sorcery.

When playing deleb, I go straightly to nightmares and tent. Nightmares support the ballista very well, and their fear special is very good. Soldier's Luck is very fun here :]
Personally, I dislike gating.. as Izzachar said, you can easily lose similiar ammount of units to the ones gated in.. And urgash call is another campaign-only myth. The idea of gating is fine (+40% bigger army at max level + chance to make it even bigger), but mainly in theory. In h5, sadly, again, fully reliable and fast working skills, like necromancy, are the best.

I usually dont take luck but might start now since resourcefullness is so damn nice, noticed it with academy hero galib.

How big is the increase of the fear procc would you appreciate with soldiers luck? Do you have any figures or calculations?

Yes gating is very good at first glance. But for end game battles its better to attack and gate later in most cases. Overseers should be gated though if you place them next to ranged. Gating is nice for dealing with neutrals thoug, I have to add, not that the numbers help you much but the gated creatures serves as a nice meat shield.
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Although you are relying mostly on the fireball for damage, at later levels, the ballista's base damage is still pretty impressive. That being said, realize that the ballista is also affected by luck. Luck is too awesome a skill not to have.
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With Swift Gating, Gating uses only half your initiative, exactly like the Wait command.
NOT losing half a turn to gate in +40% troops seem a very bad move to me o.O
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If Pacman had affected us as kids we'd be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music.

After playing inferno a little bit more, and realizing that you cant get Urgash's Call on Nymus. Plus the damage from the fire ballista helps out the underpowered infero early game with no shooter until sucubii. So I usually use Deleb now.

But what to swap it for? Destructive magic you mean? Cause the ballista also gets damage bonus from the master of fire ability. And I have to give upp searing flames. I always only consider getting 4 skills in a game. So logistics, destructive magic or attack gotta go. Destructive magic beeing clearly the best choice for me as I can still use my hero for teleporting and maybe mark of the damned would finally be usefull!

Yes swiftgating is nice, thats why I said logistics was a given choice, although I forgot to put much emphasize on it. Im ot sure if thats what you meant. However I still stand by that you shouldnt gate with all your creatures. Cerebri as the best example. If your opponent know what he is doing he should target these first for two reasons. 1 succubi, imps and overseers might not be a very good choice it wont really turn the tide of battle to target imps or overseers and succubi retaliate, better to move on with flyers or spells vs succubi. 2 devils and pitlords have lots of def and hp and wont suffer that much and you wont bring their damage down that much atleast compared to cerebri who on the other hand deal pretty much damage but have low hp. Ranged will kill alot off them therefor I think its better to use them for damage quickly and not gate them.
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Hmm, I'm not sure how useful it'd be to give destruction to a hero with low spellpower. I mean, just to use with the ballista? At best, the fireball portion of the ballista will get you a good midgame. But late game, a mass slow and frenzy are a tough trade just to pump up your fireball ballista.

But I don't know the damage on that fireball with expert destruction. Can you give me some numbers?
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using the fireball with mastery of fire you get from destruction magic has nothing to do with the damage off the fireball in this situation its a small amounth in comparison. I also didnt meant that mastery of fire or destruction magic increases the fireball damage off the ballista (maybe it does but I doubt it).

What I meant was: The mastery of fire makes all creatures hit by the heroes fireball have a 50% decrease in defence, roughly it means that all your creatures will deal 50-100% more damage to the creatures affected (depending on how much defence they got when getting hit). This applies for all your creatures even the ballista. The fireball effect from the ballista is neither affected by luck or this decrease in defence but the normal damage gets affected.

Whats nice about this is that you only need basic destructive magic and mastery of fire.

To get frenzy and a mass affecting spell you need 4 levels in dark magic, and IMO for dark magic to be really usefull you gotta have it at expert so thats even 5 lvs. So if I were to use it I had to trade not only for basic destructive magic and mastery of fire but also for attack and tactics or teleportassault and swiftgating and something else.

It all depends on the situation, what magic school is offerd to you naturally and what spells show upp in the mage guild.

And I agree with you it is a VERY tough choice/trade

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Numbers on fireball even though its not why I use it.
Skill Dmg
Basic 14+14*SP
Advanced 17+17*SP
Expert 20+20*SP
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